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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!decvax!yale!inmet!porges
From: porges@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <7800457@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Sep-85 12:37:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.7800457
Posted: Mon Sep 23 12:37:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Sep-85 08:41:48 EDT
References: <27@drusd.UUCP>
Lines: 39
Nf-ID: #R:drusd:-2700:inmet:7800457:177600:2229
Nf-From: inmet!porges    Sep 23 12:37:00 1985



> > >Even Pearl Harbor was only an attack on a military
> > >base, not an invasion or an attack on civilian targets.  Civilian
> > >casualties at Pearl Harbor were very small.  No living American has
> > >experienced an invasion of America.
> > 
> > 	Not only was Pearl Harbor a (mostly) military target, but in 1941
> > Hawaii was not officially part of the United States, being rather a 
> > territory that the US captured in the Spanish-American War, a war that
> > is not currently considered one of our most moral moments.  Furthermore,
> > fewer people were killed in the sneak attack on the fleet than would
> > have been killed if those same ships had been sunk at sea, since most
> > of the crew members weren't on the ships but ashore.  Not that I exactly
> > take the side of the Japanese in WWII...
> > 					-- Don Porges
> > 					...harpo!inmet!porges
> > 					...hplabs!sri-unix!cca!ima!inmet!porges
> > 					...yale-comix!ima!inmet!porges
> 
> C'mon spit it out, what are you inferring?  You said "Not that I exactly....."
> what do you mean, you're not sure who's side you would have been on during
> the war?  Perhaps you're just non-committal.

	Sorry for the unclarity.  What I was hoping to imply was not "The
Japanese were the good guys in World War II" but "The characterization of
the attack on Pearl Harbor as a totally incomprehensible attack against 
America is not completely straightforward, since the American forces were
themselves not on their own soil (or water)".  I have no doubts that the 
Axis was the aggressor (and worse) in the war.  My last sentence was irony,
not intentional neutrality.  (Having said that, I'll ask for more trouble:
GIVEN that the Japanense were starting a war of aggression, the outrage over
it being a "sneak attack" has always seemed redundant to me; as if the main 
thing wrong with the enemy in that war was that they hadn't made an appointment.
Once again: I do not support Japanese/Nazi expansion!  See what a little 
ambiguity of the net can lead to?)
	I have also been corrected through news and mail on the history of
Hawaii:  The territory was not seized during the Spanish-American War, but
annexed by fiat at the urging of American agricultural business.


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